


Look me in the eyes (tell me what you see)

by Wtfisgoingonhere



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, M/M, POV David "Dave" Katz, Vietnam War, klaus will need a hug
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-04
Updated: 2020-11-04
Packaged: 2021-03-08 23:20:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,388
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27384844
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wtfisgoingonhere/pseuds/Wtfisgoingonhere
Summary: Dave looked at Klaus, and the first thing he thought wasbeautiful.
Relationships: Klaus Hargreeves/David "Dave" Katz
Comments: 8
Kudos: 85





	Look me in the eyes (tell me what you see)

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first complete TUA fic, bc I'm obsessed with this show.

When the intense blue light flashed inside the tent, Dave’s first thought was that it was a bomb.

 _That’s it, I’m dying today_.

Then he realized he was still alive.

Adrenaline still rushing in his veins, he sat up, and his eyes fell on a man clutching a briefcase, only dressed in a bloodied towel.And, adrenaline still rushing in his veins, the second thing he thought was _beautiful_.

When he came to his senses, he quickly ~~fled the thought~~ brushed it off as nonsense. That guy was nothing out of the ordinary. There was nothing that made him different from any other man in the division. (Right?)

Well except for his clothes (how did you find a bath towel in this shithole?), his peculiar luggage (how could you keep something as big as a briefcase until the frontlines?) and the fact that it very much looked like he had appeared out of nowhere (???).

You see, Dave always was a practical man. Maybe it was why he had made it alive out of his first year in Vietnam and why he still had his four limbs and his mind two months into the second. It was also the reason why his comrades trusted and respected him.

That was what pushed him to ignore the obvious and focus on the confused and scared expression in the man’s eyes: scared he knew, scared he was used to in here, scared he could deal with. Scared he could help.

He opened his mouth to speak when their commandant burst in the tent, screaming orders, and suddenly there was no time.

He’d deal with the strange guy with the ~~bright~~ manic eyes later, now they had to fight for their lives. He shoved a helmet on the guy’s head and left the tent.

Later the next day, when they were on a bus that was slowly but surely taking them to yet another fight, Dave finally succeeded to have a few words with the strange guy—Klaus, he was called. His voice was soft and bright, firm and haunted at the same time.

Dave wanted to keep talking with him. So he did, and the few minutes turned into a few hours that turned into a few days.

Klaus, Dave understood quickly, was totally out of place here. (Then again, they all were, no one belonged in a war like that. But Klaus especially.)

It was clear he had never seen the shadow of a training camp, he knew how to hold a gun but had no idea how to use and load the model they were given, and he was far, far too _colourful_ for the war. Not literally of course. It was hard to be colourful in army fatigues and covered in mud. But somehow, Klaus _was_ colourful. It had something to do with the tone of his voice, always on the border of cheery, with the smile always hidden just underneath the surface, ready to come out at every moment, just like a weapon, it had something to do with his eyes, green and always moving and oh so bright.

Dave often caught himself staring at Klaus, wondering what made him so full of life. If it had been anyone else, he’d have forced himself to look away. But somehow, with Klaus, it was okay. Because everybody was staring at him anyway, Klaus always being the center of attention or not far from it.

And because sometimes, Klaus stared back.

Dave didn’t really know what it meant, apart from the fact that it was okay to look at Klaus.

So he looked.  
He looked when Klaus told jokes and weird stories about weird things, he looked when Klaus winced after making references no one understood, when he smiled and found humour in everything. He watched when Klaus stared into the void, right in front of him, or when he lost track of time looking at that mysterious briefcase. He watched as his smiles never faltered even when faced with death, and if at the beginning Dave thought it was because Klaus wasn’t broken by the war yet, he started to realize that maybe that man had seen worse. It was not reassuring to know that there was worse than war, worse than death, and that Klaus had seen it.

He listened to his stories and talked in return, like he never did before. Something about the way Klaus listened to him made it okay to talk about himself. About life at home, about his family, about what music he listened to and what book he read and everything.

He looked at Klaus’ weirdness and understood that if it wasn’t all an act, it wasn’t completely true either. Klaus was hiding in plain sight behind his apparent vulnerability and shallowness, behind smiles and laughs and jokes, behind overdone behaviour.

And because Dave looked, really looked, he noticed some of the cracks in the façade. How he drank and smoked and got high every time he could. And when he couldn’t take drugs because of the fights, he saw the way Klaus would twitch at shadows, how he would sometimes go out of his way to avoid an empty place, how his hands would shake and his breath would catch without other trigger than what was happening in his head.

Maybe it was withdrawal. Maybe it was something else.

It was probably withdrawal, Dave thought most of the time.  
And then, on very bad days, it would happen even when Klaus was clearly high out of his mind. One day, Dave asked him what was going on. Klaus’ answer was particularly unclear, something about ‘too many of them for the drugs to keep them all away’.

Dave thought that ‘them’ might be memories. Or nightmares. He didn’t ask.

The days turned into weeks.

And somehow, Klaus the strange guy with bright eyes and strange stories who he kept looking at turned into Klaus, the man with a hundred of smiles and the one he kept for Dave, Klaus the man with darkness in his eyes and light in his words, Klaus the man who talked with him for hours on end and kept his back in battle and reminded him how to smile. Klaus, who took too many drugs and a few too many risks, who never talked about home except with a bitter smile and an acerb remark about his father, who Dave felt like he knew more than anyone. He didn’t know anything factual that made sense, but he knew him in all the ways that mattered.

Klaus, the man who was not exactly a friend and not exactly a brother.

Klaus, _Klaus_.

And maybe it should have worried him, how attached he became to him. Some days it did, because the knowledge that he could lose him any second was soul-crushing. On these days, he resolved to keep his not-friend-not-brother at arm-length.

But then, Klaus would come to him, with his Klaus-like walk that was not exactly steady and not exactly stumbling—the walk of someone used to the dizziness that came with the drugs and who didn’t even try to hide he was high, and he would say something very Klaus-like about the weather, one of their comrades or how unfortunate it was that they didn’t have music on the front lines.

And Dave’s resolution would instantly crash to the ground as a strange sensation would move somewhere deep in his chest, like the resonance or the echo of something.

Dave realized it was the best he ever felt in his life. Sometimes he found that sad, that for him war was somehow happier than life at home.

Then Klaus would make a joke, and Dave would forget all about it. He liked that Klaus could see when he was feeling down. He liked that he himself could see when there were too many of ‘them’, whoever or whatever they were, and that he sometimes was enough to keep Klaus away from his demons. He liked the gaze full of gratitude and admiration Klaus would send him when it happened.

He loved how they understood each other. Easily, wordlessly. How their eyes would meet across the table during meals and they would laugh at something private to them both. How he would guess what Klaus was thinking from the look in his eyes, the twitch of his lips, the frown of his eyebrows. He loved how Klaus understood him just as well.

Days went by fast, and moments with Klaus even faster.

At some point, they were given a leave to Saigon. All the guys went with the firm intention to forget everything until their names for a few hours. They found a nightclub and decided to go in to have fun with pretty girls and drink. So Dave drank, and drank, and drank, first with the other guys, at some point with a girl, and then with Klaus. He danced too, with a girl, and then alone. Alone with Klaus, who was also alone dancing next to him. Maybe it meant they were dancing together, but Dave didn’t think about that all that much. He was too busy watching Klaus’ dance moves, wondering what the hell the guy was trying to accomplish with his weird octopus-styled dances and, even more so, why he was even surprised by its weirdness.

Weird was the first word that came to his mind, because with all the alcohol he had forgotten about the word ‘endearing’.

Suddenly, he didn’t really know how, they were kissing.

It was gentle and deliciously Klaus-like.

He liked Klaus-likeness.

As the night flew by and let its place to day, Dave came to the conclusion that more than he liked Klaus-likeness, he liked _Klaus_.

It didn’t make him afraid. Maybe because the feeling that was constantly echoing at the back of his mind told him that it was meant to happen since the beginning. Maybe because a small part of him had always known it would end up like that: Klaus, him and the growing feelings between them.

And so life went on. Life and death, because in war, there was much more death than life.

The charged but innocent looks between them turned into brushing hands, the late night talks when they were alone into kissing and cuddling and dreaming together. Klaus’ smiles turned into laughs, and Dave’s feelings turned into love.

Klaus loved him back just as much.

Dave was a practical man, but he was also, deep down, an idealist. A dreamer. That was why he enlisted in the first place, to defend the honour of his nation, and why after his first tour he went for a second. It was also why he fell in love in the middle of a war and liked to think they would both make it out of it alive.

When one of the guys in their division got blown up a few feet away from them, he realized that it was simply impossible. War spared no one.

That night, when he was holding Klaus as close as possible, he addressed a prayer to God, the first one in a long time. When faced with the horrors of war, very few of them kept their faith. Dave didn’t know if he really believed, but he prayed all the same.

 _If one of us has to die here_ , he begged, _please make it be me._

Klaus, joyful and colourful Klaus, couldn’t die in this muddy hell, in the middle of nowhere. He simply couldn’t.

Their division went quieter, after that day, and Klaus’ eyes followed a new shadow. His smiles stayed the same though, and Dave realized that of all the men he had ever known, Klaus was the strongest.

Dave’s chest had swollen with admiration and love that day, and when Klaus had asked him why he was looking at him like that, he had replied ‘I love you’. As always, Klaus had answered with the same words and the amazed smile of someone who had never thought it was possible.

Dave resolved to repeat it to him until Klaus couldn’t do anything but believe him with his entire being.

In the end, he didn’t have the time.

Maybe it was the prayer, most likely it was simply war.

On February the 21st, on the Mountain of the Crouching Beast in the A’Shau Valley, Dave felt something sharp knocking the air out of his lungs.

Maybe he had fallen on a rock in his haste to hide behind the sandbags. Someone was talking next to him in a voice so deliciously familiar. Dave couldn’t make out the words.

Suddenly Klaus was here, with bright and terrified eyes, and it reminded Dave of the first time he had seen him, nearly a year ago. He had been so intriguing and captivating in that tent, full of mystery and yet so vulnerable. If Dave had learned one thing in the past few months, it was that vulnerable didn’t mean weak.

But now, there was something that escaped Dave’s understanding, because Klaus was crying, why was he crying? His vision was blurred, but he could see the tears in Klaus’ eyes all the same, he could hear the panic in his voice. It was not good, not good at all.

 _It’s okay_ , he wanted to say. _You’re okay, you’re gonna be fine._

But there was an echo in the back of his mind that grew louder and louder until it was the only thing he knew, an echo that had been there since the very first moment he saw Klaus and had been resonating in his chest every day ever since. And in that moment, when the only thing he could see was Klaus’s face under the sky burning with explosions, Dave finally, _finally_ understood it.  
_Beautiful_ , it said. _Beautiful_.

This time, Dave didn’t try to flee the thought.

His vision grew darker and the sounds around him slowly disappeared until the only thing he could hear was the erratic beating of his heart. There was an odd pain in his chest, and it occurred to him that he had probably been shot. Maybe he should be worried.  
He wasn’t. Because Klaus was still looking at him with his _colourful_ eyes, and the only thing Dave could think was

_beautiful._

**Author's Note:**

> Later, Dave thanked the little girl on the bike for answering his prayer.


End file.
